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Foot-tapping music has been around her since she started winning accolades and prizes for her dancing.
Foot-tappingu00a0music has been around her since she started winning accolades and prizes for her dancing. She was even nicknamed Happy Feet by one of her friends. It is only fitting that the dance academy 23-year-old Nirali Someshwar's opened in her living room in 2004 is called Happy Feet. "Happy Feet Dance Academy is six years old now," she says with pride. Her romance with dance started when she was all of three.
"My grandmother noticed my talent very early and used to take me around for dance competitions and as luck would have it, I stared winning prizes when I was three!" she says. That's when her parents started taking notice and enrolled her in a dancing school, Raja Rajeshwari Institute in Mumbai, a school that has had illustrious students who made a big impact in Bollywood, like Hema Malini, Vani Ganpati and Meenakshi Sheshadri, to name a few.
Nirali adds, "I had dance in the genes. My family is full of dancers, among them my father, my uncle." Nirali first mastered Bharat Natyam, and learnt Kathak as well. Soon she picked up western dances like salsa, jive, belly dancing and hip hop. She even trained in Hindustani classical music. Then, the family moved to Pune, and 1999 proved to be a landmark year, as she featured in many TV programmes.
She says, "When I was in Class 11, mothers came to me with their kids. After my training they went on to win competitions, and I realised I was teaching 10 kids! Since Happy Feet started, I've trained some 1,200 people. Many are from IT and other professions. Today, we have 500 members."
Shambhavi Sharma, a mother in her 30s, says, "My nine-year-old daughter is studying under Nirali and I can see that she puts her heart into teaching the kids!"
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Those interested in joining the Happy Feet Dance Academy may contactu00a0 Nirali Someshwar onu00a0 9226769442.
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